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More "Crotchety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... care," she said at length. "Hers isn't a very practical mind. It's impossible to say about Judge Tiffany. He's crotchety. The right's on your side, for a man has a right to change his employment, hasn't he? And I'm sure you have more than returned your little salary. On the whole, I don't know but it would be better for you with Eleanor if the Judge did get angry with you. A girl with ideals like hers rather likes ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... all other hoofed animals. Each one has its own headful of notions, and rarely will two be found quite alike in temperament and views of life. Some are sanguine and sensible, others are nervous, crotchety, and full of senseless fears. Those who are responsible for them in captivity are constantly harassed by fears that they will stampede in their stalls or yards, and break their own necks and legs in most unexpected ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... compared to a comet,—a body with a bright head and a nebulous tail. Like all radicals and reformers they had a fringe of unbalanced and crotchety folk. It must be said, too, that absorption in a topic remote from the concerns of one's daily life is apt to be somewhat distracting and demoralizing. Dr. Joseph Henry Allen—an admirable and too little known writer—has ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her hands on Palmer's pillow, but not touching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... castle had decided to give into his hands the work to be done on the church. Masons were scarce in England at that time, and most of those who had skill were at work on half-built cathedrals. David was a wise and thorough builder, but he had the reputation of being rather crotchety. Sir Walter Giffard suspected that this was due to his absolute honesty. He would rather pick up a job here and there which he could do as it should be done, than to have steady employment where scamped building was winked at. This suited the knight very well. He wanted ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... old bachelor uncles, who did not care for having children near them. A man of that sort might prefer to overlook his young relation's welfare at a distance. Such a person, however, would be sure to be crotchety and hot-tempered enough to be easily offended. It would not be very pleasant if there were such a one, and he should learn all the truth about the thin, shabby clothes, the scant food, and the hard work. She felt very queer indeed, and very uncertain, and she gave ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I seem crotchety, dear. Indeed, it is no pretense on my part. You cannot imagine how that man Ventana persecuted me. The mere suggestion of any one's paying me compliments and trying to be fascinating is so repellent that I cringe at the thought. And even our sailor-like captain will think it necessary to play ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... don't suppose I should like this little escapade of yours and mine to be known. You must take care. Why, you know, there's father. He's very crotchety over some things. He likes all of you, but over and over again ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... certainly should try the second, that you may attain to the first. My uncle was asked to stand for these burghs some ten years ago, but he was too crotchety, and could not write an address that was at all likely to be acceptable to the electors, so he gave up the contest before it began. Yet, you know, it would be well to have a few crotchety people in the House of Commons. The game of life, whether social or political, is not played by ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the table. She took the letter with the enclosed contract and read both of them. Her heart beat with joy, but she was exceedingly careful not to betray her state of mind to Daniel: she was afraid of his contradictory and crotchety disposition. She hardly dared look at him, as she waited in anxious suspense to see ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... modified and perhaps obliterated in the children by corresponding differences in character, would be doubly exaggerated. The children of selfish parents would be thieves; those of spendthrifts, beggars; those of crotchety parents, monomaniacs; those born of sensual parents, beastly debauchees. A few generations of such a degenerating process would either exterminate the race or drive it back ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... said the porter confidentially, "how people are very often blamed for something they did not do. The tenant in the next flat is a bit crotchety; he's a musician, and rather deaf. If he hadn't been deaf, he wouldn't have said that Miss Rider was the cause of his being wakened up. I suppose it was ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... treasure-trove which Leigh Hunt unfailingly discovers, as in the now pretty generally acknowledged case of the character of De Flores in Middleton's "Changeling." And Lamb had a much less wide and a much more crotchety system of admissions and exclusions. Macaulay was perfectly right in fixing, at the beginning of his essay on the dramatists of the Restoration, upon this catholicity of Hunt's taste as the main merit in it; and it is really ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... more in name than anything else, for old David, the missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no matter if it ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who, by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to thank him for. There are noble people who take the world's side and make it seem 'for the nonce' almost respectable; ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... his lordship. "You know what kind of a man he is. In fact, I fear he is very nearly non compos as it is. He has got so confoundedly crotchety of late, that I should not feel surprised if, under some whim or other, he set his face-against it altogether. In fact, it is useless, and worse than useless, to consult him at all about it. I move, therefore, that ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... founded. Another murder in the neighbourhood would certainly vex the authorities, and put the police in a bad temper. Bouzille knew from experience that the first thing people do after a tragedy is to arrest all the tramps, and that if the police are at all crotchety they always contrive to get the tramps sentenced for something else. He had had a momentary inclination to establish his winter quarters in prison, but since then he had formed the plan of going to Paris, and liberty appealed to him more. He reached ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... rode the hobby-horse of frugal and severe training to an extent that might have proved disastrous to his son Michel, had not the boy been singularly well endowed by nature to correspond to his parent's wishes, had nurtured him in the scorn of luxury by methods which would be considered very crotchety nowadays. But this could not have been 'my chamber' in which King Henry of Navarre slept, in 1584, when he paid a visit to Montaigne at his fortified house. There was a better one in that part of the building which has disappeared. Montaigne tells, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... shows that he must have been an odd and crotchety creature, but one with sense in his crotchets. He seems to have been annoyed by mispronunciation of his own and other work: and accordingly he adopts (with full warning and explanation) the plan ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... waited while the room filled with ruddy, crotchety gentlemen supported by canes or crutches—elderly, old and of middle age. Among those of the latter class was a giant of a man, erect and dignified, accompanied by a big blond youngster in a lieutenant's uniform. He sat down and began to talk with another patient of the troubles ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete[Fr], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opinitre; bigoted &c. (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c. 499; credulous &c 486; warped. misjudged &c. v. Adv. ex parte[Lat]. Phr. nothing like leather; the wish the father to the thought; wishful thinking; unshakable conviction; "my mind is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Ob. 1692."—Little Boston let him be, when we talk about him. The ring he wears labels him well enough. There is stuff in the little man, or he would n't stick so manfully by this crooked, crotchety old town. Give him a chance.—You will drop the Sculpin, won't you?—I ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... and could not. For Elsa and Margot and Hedwig were not the only ones by a long way. What girl in the village did he not love, if it came to that: Liesel, who worked so hard and lived so poorly, bullied by her cross-grained granddam. Susanna, plain and a little crotchety, who had never had a sweetheart to coax the thin lips into smiles. The little ones—for so they seemed to long, lanky Ulrich, with their pleasant ways—Ulrich smiled as he thought of them—how should a man ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... enlivened with up-to-the-minute allusions. "She's got a good mind," is said of one character, "she's read 'Anthony Adverse.'" The play gives a brief glimpse of everyday life in the Hunter family, with Mr. Hunter grown crotchety and weary with business cares, making life miserable instead of pleasant for the family he has toiled for. His wife meekly accepts his grumblings and his tyranny. His children frequently threaten rebellion, ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... will simply call him a governor, not troubling ourselves with his qualifications, as of course they have not been considered at the Colonial Office. He may be an upright, clear-headed, indefatigable man, in the prime of life, or he may be old, crotchety, pigheaded, and mentally and physically incapable. He may be either; it does not much matter, as he can only remain for five years, at ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... would defy him—there was Nancy Ruggles ready to be his slave—and others besides her. And his career could be just as well assisted by the Bishop's daughter as by Canon Ebley's niece, even though her uncle was a crotchety and unknown Lord, patron of two fat livings. But Stella, with a rebellious little curl loosened on her snowy neck and a rebellious pout upon her cherry lips, was so very alluring a creature to call one's own, the desire of the flesh, which he called by any other name, ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... he said: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' Those were his very words: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety bachelor notions flew out of my head. I knew then, in a flash, that all my knowledge and all my queer ideas of life were just humbug! I had missed the Child in the House. Yes,"—his voice dropped with ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... for various reasons, the old men drifted from a position of respect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this; they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant to look upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only too self-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority of audiences is composed of young men, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... the nurse is either the comfort or the torment of the house. Everyone also knows innumerable young mothers who put up with inexcusable crankiness from a crotchety middle-aged woman because she was "so wonderful" to the baby. And here let it be emphasized that such an one usually turns out to have been not wonderful to the baby at all. That she does not actually abuse a helpless infant ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Flamel? I can buy you all you want—" but he felt himself irresistibly forced into an attitude of smiling compliance. "Flamel always has the newest books going, hasn't he? You must be careful, by the way, about returning what he lends you. He's rather crotchety about ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... says, is necessarily a marplot; he does not know what he would be at; if he did, he does not much care for it; and, moreover, he is 'governed habitually by a spirit of contradiction, and is always wise beyond what is practicable.' Upon this text Hazlitt dilates with immense spirit, satirising the crotchety and impracticable race, and contrasting them with the disciplined phalanx of Toryism, brilliantly and bitterly enough to delight Gifford; and yet he is writing a preface to a volume of radical Essays. He is consoling ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
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